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The BBC published a list of 100 books. It’s been suggested that this list points out that most folks have only read 6 of the 100, but actually the BBC was looking for the UK’s best loved novel. Nonetheless, here’s the list and my score. Looks like I’ve read 21 of them. At least as far as I can recall. There are a few on the list that I think I’ve read but just can’t remember anymore (those Bronte siblings!). Is it a bad sign that there are only a couple of books on the list that are actually in my “plan to read” list?

I find it interesting that most of the books that I enjoy the most in the “Science Fiction” category are really not “Science Fiction” at all. I’ve really enjoyed reading Zero History by William Gibson (not quite done yet!) and the other two books in the series. While the publisher marks them as SF, they clearly aren’t. There’s nothing really speculative about these books from a science perspective. It reminds me of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, also categorized as SF but really just high-tech fiction. And so my question is — who and what else should I be reading that falls in this category? These aren’t quite suspense or spy novels, but they really resonate with me.

Some friends saw my Microsoft badge the other day and noted how different I look compared to 2006, before I lost a great deal of weight (about 75 pounds). Here are three photos from vacations in Hawaii showing what I looked like before and after. In case you are wondering, I still wear the hat in the first photo.

There’s some seriously bad behavior in Facebook that seems to kill IE8. Leaving Facebook running overnight in IE results in the following memory utilization the next morning:

That’s 1.7 GB of memory consumed by IE8 just for the tab that’s running Facebook. You can usually tell that things have gone wonky because IE starts showing the error icon in the lower left hand corner. Unfortunately, shutting down IE doesn’t always work — sometimes the Facebook tab keeps spinning in the background (each tab is running in a separate process). The only recourse at this point appears to be to kill the process (just the Facebook tab process — easy to find because it’s the iexplore.exe process consuming more memory than any other), which crashes the tab and causes a reload. IE stays alive (thanks to the multiple-process tab model) and reloads Facebook in its original, low memory state.

It would be easy to blame IE8 for this behavior, but I suspect that this is really a problem with Facebook’s client-side javascript code.

This seems like a pricing problem. Look at the price of this book compared to the paperback. Why are bits more expensive than atoms? This is not a game — this is just unfortunate, especially for those of us who prefer our media in electronic form.

As a Kindle subscriber to Seattle Times, you might like to know of a price change to Seattle Times. Effective March 12th, 2010 the price of Seattle Times has changed to $9.99/month for new subscribers.

As an existing subscriber to Seattle Times you will continue to be billed at the previous rate of $5.99/month for six more months (until September 12th, 2010) after which you will be billed at the monthly rate then in effect. We believe that the Kindle edition of Seattle Times continues to provide excellent value for customers with a free 14 day trial period, wireless delivery via Whispernet, no long-term commitments, and substantial savings vs. regular print subscription rates.

As always you are free to cancel your subscription at any time. If you are still in the 14 day free trial period of your subscription you will not be charged, otherwise you will receive a prorated refund for the unused portion of your subscription. To change or cancel a subscription, please visit http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

Am I missing something? Given what little we know about the upcoming Apple Tablet, the rumors all seem to indicate that it’ll have something close to an iPhone compatible app store. That should mean that the Kindle app, which now runs on PCs and iPhones should also run on the Apple Tablet. Amazon may lose out on some Kindle hardware sales, but they should be able to open up the Kindle store to anyone with a Tablet and the app. Then it’s a competition around who has the most content, but the consumer wins — publishers can publish through whatever store they want and I get the books I want. Seems like this is the most obvious path to travel …